Lottery tickets commonly include a substrate on which is printed game data in a game play area which is then covered by a coating of a scratch-off material to allow the player to reveal the game data or selected parts of the game data to play the game. An important aspect of such tickets is that of providing an attractive and aesthetic appearance which acts to attract the customer to purchase. Typically such tickets have an overprint layer applied onto the scratch-off coating so as to identify the areas to be scratched and to provide an attractive appearance, bearing in mind that the majority of the area of the front of the ticket is taken up by the game area. While the material printed is relative simple in most cases, attempts have been made to make the ticket more attractive by applying more complex images onto the game area.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,569,512 (Brawner, Jon M) assigned to Dittler Brothers Incorporated and entitled Card with integrated overprinting is disclosed lottery tickets which utilize continuous overprint inks that mask the boundaries between their “secure” and “unsecure” portions to inhibit unscrupulous players from successfully tampering with them. The method uses reformulated overprint inks to permit a single set to be applied to both portions of a card. The method is stated to have the advantages that more vibrant and aesthetically pleasing graphics may be displayed as well while utilizing fewer printing stations during the printing process.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,704,647 (Desbiens, Jean-Pierre) assigned to BABN Technologies Corporation and entitled Multi-color overprinting of scratch-off lottery tickets there is disclosed a method of producing a lottery ticket and lottery tickets produced thereby wherein an overprinting layer is provided over a scratch-off layer, the overprinting layer comprising an image obtained from a design in which the colors in the design have been separated into half tone images of each color and are superimposed on the scratch-off layer of the lottery ticket.
Lottery tickets are printed at high speed using printing rollers for the repeated sections of the tickets such as the basic graphics, the security and base layers, the covering layers of varnish and the like, the scratch-off coating and the overprint layer. The game data are printed on the ticket generally using an ink jet printer controlled by a computer to apply the different game data for each of the tickets. The game data generally also includes an identifying bar code (or machine readable code) which again is unique to the ticket concerned. The game data are generally relatively simple often being merely numbers or letters which can be readily printed by the ink jet printer. Thus the overprint images are printed using the conventional printing press which includes a printing roller for each of the different colors. The printing roller system is used because it provides the high speeds necessary for commercial production of such tickets and because it applies inks which can be selected to ensure proper coverage over the underlying material regardless of its characteristics.